Lillian Randolph was a 20th Century actress who routinely, yet proudly, presented the role of the black domestic in film and radio and defended her right to maintain such characters in an intelligent fashion for much of her career. Randolph was born in Knoxville, Tennessee … Read MoreLillian Randolph (1915-1980)
Born on July 2, 1922, to sharecroppers Mattie and Ed Henry on the Flowers plantation in Coahoma County outside of Clarksdale, Mississippi, Aaron Henry would come of age in the era of segregation, fight in World War II, and return home from war ready campaign … Read MoreAaron Henry (1922-1997)
Best remembered for the role of Reverend Sykes in the film classic To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), William Walker was born in Pendleton, Indiana in 1917. The son of a freed slave, Walker was the first African American graduate of Pendleton High School. After graduating, … Read MoreWilliam Walker (1917-1992)
Elaine Jones, the first woman to administer the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense and Education Fund (NAACP-LDF), was born in Norfolk, Virginia on March 2, 1944, the daughter of a railroad porter and a school teacher. She received a Bachelor … Read MoreElaine R. Jones (1944- )
In the nearly half century between 1900 and 1945, various political leaders and intellectuals from Europe, North America, and Africa met six times to discuss colonial control of Africa and develop strategies for eventual African political liberation. In the article that follows, historian Saheed Adejumobi … Read MoreThe Pan-African Congresses, 1900-1945
William Stanley Braithwaite, the acclaimed poet and anthologist, was born in Boston on December 6, 1878. He was the second of five children born to William Smith Braithwaite and Emma Dewolfe Braithwaite. William Stanley Braithwaite’s father, originally from British Guiana, was a man of mixed … Read MoreWilliam Stanley Beaumont Braithwaite (1878-1962)
Clement Garnett Morgan, a lawyer and civil rights leader, was born in 1859 to slave parents, Clement and Elizabeth Garnett Morgan in Stafford County, Virginia. Shortly after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the family moved to Washington D.C., where Morgan went to Preparatory High School … Read MoreClement Garnett Morgan (1859-1929)
In mid-August 1908, the white population of Springfield, Illinois hastily reacted to reports that a white woman has been assaulted in her home by a black man. Soon afterwards another instance of an assault by a black man on a white woman was reported. These … Read MoreSpringfield Race Riot, 1908
John E. (Jack) Nail, a successful Harlem, New York realtor, was born in New London, Connecticut in 1883. His parents, Elizabeth and John B. Nail, moved to New York City where the senior Nail bought a hotel, restaurant, and billiard parlor after working for a … Read MoreJohn E. Nail (1883-1947)
Ida Alexander Gibbs Hunt, teacher, Pan-Africanist and civil rights leader, was born on November 16, 1862 in Victoria, British Columbia. Her parents were Mifflin Wistar Gibbs and Maria Alexander. Ida Gibbs studied in the Oberlin Conservatory of Music from 1872 to 1876. She then went … Read MoreIda Alexander Gibbs Hunt (1862-1957)
